South Korean born social practice artist-researcher (이미래/李未來) Mirae kh RHEE’s transracial life experiences led her to work between the United States, South Korea, and Germany, where learning foreign languages, code-switching, and cultural traditions and customs continuously inform her artwork. Through the lens of transnational feminism, RHEE creates complex Gesamtkunstwerk(e) (total-works-of-art) that tell autoethnographical narratives, incorporating social intervention, participatory performance, drawings, installation and new technologies. RHEE received her MFA in studio art at the University of California-Irvine, where she was a Graduate Studies Diversity Scholar and a Jacob K. Javits Fellow, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received a four year merit scholarship and a four year Ewald Foundation scholarship.
Her notable solo exhibitions include Missing Merope, Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles (2023), Sammel-Sucht/Collecting Crave, Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin (2022 – 23), Books and Things, Paul Robeson Galleries, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ (2022); Inventing Genealogies, New Media Artspace, Baruch College, NY (2021), Unfinished Business, SOMA Artspace, Berlin (2021), and Mourning Becomes Electra, Warehouse Gallery, Incheon, South Korea (2019). Residencies and fellowships include Baruch College (2021), German Arts Council Women in Media and Culture Mentoring Program (2021), Vermont College of Fine Arts (2020), Incheon Art Platform (2019), Goldrausch Künstlerinnen Projekt (2018), the Berlin Senate Working Artist Stipend (2015), Millay Colony for the Arts (2013), MacDowell (2012), among others. Her work has been supported by a Stiftung Kunstfonds Neustart Kultur stipend, Puffin Foundation grant, Berlin Senate Research grant, the AHL Foundation First Biannual Art grant, and a Heinrich Böll Stiftung Artist grant. In 2022 RHEE was the Korea Arts Foundation of America (KAFA) Awardee and the first adopted Korean American artist to receive this honor.
RHEE is an artist, researcher, writer, and speaker. RHEE recently gave lectures and presentations at the University of Chicago Art History Department, Graduate Center of CUNY/Sarah Lawrence College, and South Korean Embassy Berlin. Upcoming exhibitions include Schaufenster/Atelierhof Kreuzberg, Berlin; Residenzschloss (Dresden Palace); the Museum für Asiatische Kunst (Asian Art Museum Berlin); and the San Diego Museum of Art.